Movie: Aligarh
Rating: ****
Starring: Manoj Bajpayee, Rajkummar Rao, Ashish Vidyarthi
Director: Hansal Mehta
What it's about:
Biopics are a big trend in B-Town from the last couple of years. The lives of the film (The Dirty Picture) and sports celebrities (Mary Kom, Milkha Singh) and even criminals (Charles Sobraj) have been captured on film. Last week's Neerja and this week's Aligarh have something in common. They are both capture the lives of regular people on-screen. Director Hansal Mehta, after Shahid and City Lights, returns with Aligarh, a true story Dr. SR Siras, (Manoj Bajpayee) a professor of Marathi and the head of the Classical Modern Indian Languages Faculty at the Aligarh university, who was a victim of a sting operation and was suspended on grounds of morality. Miscreants broke into his home and filmed sharing an intimate moment with a rickshaw puller at his apartment on the campus. Siras' story was carried in some paper till a young newspaper reporter Deepu Sebastian (Rajkummar Rao) decided to follow it up and it becomes national news. The film is about how Siras is shunned from everywhere, including his workplace and how he then fights the system. How he gets support and strength to fight his case, even while struggling to survive on a daily basis.
What's good:
Everyone knows the story Siras. It was in the papers not very long ago, so the challenge was to still keep it interesting, and the film overcomes that. It's not a story with intense moments, drama or thrills, which almost makes it an anti-biopic. Having a gay protagonist who is also a senior citizen is not a subject any director would choose. But Hansal Mehta is not any director. Aligarh is about human rights, more than homosexuality. Mehta has made a remarkably sensitive film that is bound to connect with everyone on a humane level. The scene where he goes to the doctor, who leaves without seeing him will break your heart. And this discrimination is very real in our society. My first thought was that a film about an old homosexual victimised by society would be a depressing, but despite the seriousness of the film, Mehta's treatment of the film keeps it from being a kerchief wringer. There are plenty of light moments in the film, Like Deepu's interaction with his landlady, Siras' delight in old Lata Mangeshkar hits and Siras asking Deepu while relating his tale, "Am I drunk? No? then I think I'll have another." Manoj Bajpai is brilliant as the gentle professor. And the credit for some part of that has to go to Rajkumar Rao. The transition of Siraj and Deepu from strangers to two people with mutual interest and later to a friend and a confidant is smooth and natural. Ashish Vidyarthi is excellent as the lawyer defending Siras. Even the courtroom scenes which put Siras to sleep will keep you engaged. Each member of the supporting cast is superb.
What's not:
The scenes where Siras is lost in music didn't warrant whole songs. A para each would have sufficed. Whatever needed to be relayed was done and after that, you just want the scene to end. Although every director decides what part of the story he wants to tell of the protagonist, I felt it was incomplete without a little bit about his family.
What to do:
The best part of the film is its utter commitment to Siras' story. We watched silently while an innocent man was victimised just because he was different from us, that's just one more reason to watch this film.
